This book is a compilation of selected articles of mine consisting of 40 small and big; very good, good and mediocre, many of which are presented in various seminars and conferences; and later revised and published in different well reputed national and international journals. It also consists of some articles written for special volumes on special occasions brought out by various reputed organizations. These papers were written and published during a period of 34 years of my academic service in the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore - most of that time - and other organizations.
Prof. Udaya Narayana Singh, the Director of Central Institute of Indian Languages proposed to bring out this volume and asked me to submit these papers in a book form a few days before my retirement which I could submit about two months after my retirement. But due to various reasons, including my staying out of Mysore for sometime, and other extraneous factors the work was delayed for a long time.
The book consists of research articles some of which are the results of the experiments I conducted during my very long stint in the SRLC of Central Institute of Indian Languages, as lecturer and Principal. Article No. 28 entitled Second Language Learning by Cognate vs Non-cognate learners: An Empirical Study is the outcome of an experiment conducted for 3 years during 1983-86. Similarly, S.No. 16 entitled Optimum Time for an Objective Test is an experiment conducted during 1980 to 84. Although this is a very small paper of less than 32 pages it gives a formula to fix the minimum necessary time to answer multiple choice tests. normally used in examinations of professional courses, Union and State Civil Services and other recruiting agencies. This is unique since there was no such formula prior to this existing in the field of educational and psychological testing. This paper was published in 1987 in a reputed journal of United Kingdom called SYSTEM - An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics. This paper was appreciated by many statisticians in the country including those of Association of Indian Universities. Another unique paper included in this volume is S.No. 12 entitled Pike’s Tagmeme Reinterpreted which gives a mathematical interpretation to the concept of tagmemic theory. Prof. Pike himself and Dr. Vern Poethress a renowned mathematician of USA reviewed and appreciated this paper and suggested to send it to JDL for publication. These are a few of my papers which I feel are very good. | also feel proud of them as they contributed to the development of the theory of their concerned fields. Some other papers I feel very good are The Role of Translation in Language Teaching, Error Analysis: A Case Study of Phonological Errors in Telugu, The Concept of Interlanguage Inter-dialect and Inter-idiolect and The Magic of Sanskrit Metres and their Beautification in Telugu which threw new light on research - the former two second language teaching, and the last on Telugu prosody - and made theoretical contributions.
The book is divided into five sections. The first section, Language Education consists of papers on language policy of India, and the language policy for school system and for tribals, language use in media, learners' dictionaries, evaluation of news stories, translation, prosody, scripts, etc. The second section, Theoretical and Comparative Linguistics consists of papers on the theory of tagmemics, discourse analysis, technical terminology, culturally common vocabulary, referential use of personal pronouns, concord in Dravidian languages and Hindi, etc. Section three, Language Teaching and Testing consists of papers on strategies, problems and solutions both on mother tongue and second language teaching and testing. It also consists of papers on error analysis, interlanguage, remedial materials, etc. Section four, Telugu Linguistics consists of papers on all types of Telugu phrases and phrase modifiers. The fifth and the last section consists of papers on other matters like cultural and linguistic behaviour in South India and the status of linguistics in India.
However, the last paper (No. 40) of the book although does not belong directly to any of the sections mentioned above, is included in this volume because it is felt necessary to highlight the present status of linguistics in the country, the reasons for this state of affairs, the role of linguists in this, and suggestions to linguists and educational authorities to keep linguistics alive on a par with other subjects of social sciences/arts.
I express my heartfelt thanks to Prof. Udaya Narayana Singh who is primarily instrumental for bringing out this book. But for his imaginative suggestion I would have never thought of bringing out a volume of my research papers in the form of a book. I am also very much thankful to Smt. B. Shobha Rani Govinda who took pains in compiling this book, and to her patience to carry out the corrections again and again whenever I suggested something. I also thank the Manager of CIIL Printing Press Sri S.B. Biswas and the Publications Incharge of the Institute Dr. K. Srinivasacharya for their constant and continuous help to complete this endeavour successfully. I am also thankful to the staff of the CIIL Printing Press, including Sri A. Subramanyan and his team for extending me their full cooperation, but for whose help this book could have not seen light. Last but not the least, I express my thanks to my wife Dr. K. Bhanumathi who assisted me in proof-reading at times of dire need.
This book was proposed to be brought out soon after Prof. K. Viswanatham retired, as done in the case of some other senior scholars of the Institute, but it got delayed. This is a volume of some of his papers which are well referred to by researchers and other scholars in the field.
Prof. K. Viswanatham was a well known scholar of the Institute who joined as a lecturer in the Southern Regional Language Centre of the Institute on 18'" September 1970. Later he worked as Reader-Cum-Research Officer, Principal of Southern Regional Language Centre, and retired as Professor- Cum-Deputy Director. Prof. Viswanatham was an active member of the Institute and involved in serious research in the areas of language, linguistics and literature. He is one of the linguists in the country who worked extensively in using the tagmemic model of grammatical analysis and worked on a project under the direct supervision of Prof. K.L. Pike, the founder of tagmemic theory in 1980. He gave a mathematical interpretation to the concept of tagmeme which was appreciated by Prof. K.L. Pike himself, and Prof. Vern S. Poythress, Westminster Seminary, a mathematician from, USA. He is also an expert in the area of educational testing and evaluation who was trained at Educational Testing Service, Princeton, and invented a statistical formula for fixing the minimum time required to answer multiple choice objective tests, a formula hitherto did not exist in the field of educational testing, which was commended by the Association of Indian Universities, NCERT, Prof. S.B. Rao, former Director of Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkatta, and statisticians from the Universities of Mysore, Poona and Hyderabad.
After his retirement Prof. Viswanatham worked for sometime as Director in National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, New Delhi under Justice Ranganatha Misra who was its Chairman, and as Professor and Head of the Department of the Department of Language Teaching Technology in Dravidian University, Kuppam. He is at present working as a Visiting Faculty in the Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies in the University of Hyderabad.
This book consisting of 40 research papers some of which are very large and some are very short, covers a wide range of topics on various fields such as language, literature, scripts, theoretical and applied linguistics, tagmemic theory, prosodic features, cultural aspects, innovations in statistics, application of statistics to education, demography, tribal languages, experimental studies in language teaching, innovative concepts in error analysis, comparative studies, lexicography, technical terminology and many other related areas.
feel this book would be a treasure and a very useful volume, and both the students and the researchers in the field of linguistics and language studies would certainly welcome it.
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